We test for the signaling hypothesis versus the human capital theory using the Wiles test in a country which has experienced a dramatic increase in the supply of skills in a relatively short period of time. For this purpose, we construct a job match index based on the usefulness of school-provided skills and the relevance of the job performed to…

Gender pay gaps in earnings are well-documented in the literature. However, new factors contributing to women's lower earnings have emerged and remain under-researched. Educational choices are among them. We use a rich administrative dataset from Poland, a Central Eastern European country with high tertiary education enrolment and high female…

This study investigates the impact of the extension of the duration of general education on educational opportunities and labour market performance. Taking the example of the Polish education reform of 1999, which we treated as a natural experiment, we used a regression discontinuity design and estimated the effects of an additional year of…

Context: Existing studies have explored the association between workplace training and wages suggesting that training participation may have a positive association with wages. However, we still know very little about whether this association varies between men and women. Through its potential positive association with wages, training may balance…

Background: There is a growing literature providing evidence on the importance of non-cognitive skills for life outcomes. However, to date there is limited evidence on the gains from incorporating such measures into large-scale competence surveys. Methods: We investigate the relationship between personality traits and eight important life…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

This article provides evidence about differences in the recent tertiary education expansion in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. Focusing on these differences, we have examined private returns to tertiary education acquired before and after the tertiary education expansion. We compare these returns as follows: Austria with…